CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT The Cipher
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
The Cipher
Some wounds whisper louder than screams.
He picked me up like I weighed nothing. Like I was a song he’d already memorised, even if every note of me was a broken melody. I let him, because I couldn’t move. Couldn’t lift a finger or remember what it felt like to be untouched.
He was right.
Even the dead knew it now, including Adrian.
I was sore in places I didn’t want to name.
I thought I might be bleeding down there. I thought I might be cracked open down there. Still dripping, raw and filled with him. His cum slid down the inside of my bruised thighs as he carried me to the car, like proof of his victory. He was calm now. But still brutal.
Like he didn’t ruin me on someone else’s grave. Like he hadn’t just made me forget the only man I ever loved.
The car door opened, and I didn’t look at the driver. He settled in the backseat, keeping me on his lap like a child, like a possession, like something he owned before I ever belonged to myself.
He didn’t speak, didn’t demand anything more. Just wrapped his arms around me, his hand sliding through my hair with infuriating gentleness. His lips brushed the slope of my shoulder, feather-light kisses pressing into skin he had bitten minutes ago.
And I cried harder.
Because this tenderness… it was a lie.
A fucking illusion.
I punched him. Once and then again. My fists were weak, trembling, and pathetically vulnerable. “I hate you,” I whispered. “I hate you. I hate you. I hate you…”
His arms only tightened like he knew the rhythm of my rage, as if he had done this before with others. Or maybe just me. In some past life, I didn’t remember consenting to.
“I hate you…” I said again. But it came out cracked, wrecked.
I cried into the fabric of his coat, into the scent of him… smoke, sin, and the grave… and I sobbed until the words lost their meaning.
And when I finally stopped, it wasn’t because I was done. It was because exhaustion dragged me like waves pulling a corpse out to sea.
My dreams weren’t soft. They were full of teeth.
I was running through ash and fire, barefoot and bleeding. The monsters behind me had his face. The monsters ahead whispered Adrian’s name. I didn’t know who I was running from anymore. Or who I was running to. But either way, I knew the girl who loved the dead boy was gone.
And the woman in his enemy’s arms… she was something else entirely.
I woke up to the blinding sun. To the golden light that spilt across the room and the ocean just outside. Like the night hadn’t been violent, and I hadn’t been silenced.
I was in a bed, one I didn’t recognise. Pillows too soft and sheets too clean. Pristine white. No street noise. No broken pieces. No cold night air around my ankles like chains. However, I was one who was still attached to them.
Just stillness. And his scent.
I wasn’t wearing a dress anymore.
A white shirt hung off my frame, too big. It smelled like power and spice and the skin carved from hell.
I was also clean. Washed. It must’ve been Elena. She would’ve done it gently, wouldn’t she? Would’ve tried not to look. Would’ve cried when she saw what her master did to me.
Soreness bloomed between my thighs, across my ribs, and inside my mouth. My body pulsed with phantom pain, some places from the impact and others from the way I let it happen.
Mechanically, I moved. One step at a time. One breath at a time.
I brushed my teeth with a trembling hand, watching the foam bleed pink into the sink.
I bathed. Hot water stung, and the soap slid across bruises I earned. My skin flinched beneath my own touch. But I didn’t cry. Not anymore. I was emptied last night.
When I was done, I didn’t look in the mirror.
I knew what waited for me there.
The ghost of a woman who lost the war she didn’t even know she was fighting. Swollen lips, purple constellations on my neck, and fingerprints pressed into flesh. Dignity buried somewhere between the bed and the floor.
But I dressed anyway.
I found a red dress in the closet, silk, slit high and low neckline, the one he liked on me. The one that made him look at me like a slut. I put it on. Painted my lips red. The same shade he smeared across my cheek the first time he kissed me.
I curled my hair and left it wild. Let it fall like chaos around my shoulders.
When I was finished, I finally looked in the mirror.
And this time, I smiled.
Because I looked beautiful. Ethereally so.
But inside… inside, I was bleeding. Still drowning. I was still pushed down on the stone and taken like a cheap whore.
And maybe that’s what survival is. Looking like heaven while carrying hell inside you.
I didn’t know what time it was. Morning? Afternoon? The sun poured through the windows like honey, too sweet for a day like this. But I needed to go downstairs. I needed him to see me. See what he did. See what I made of it.
So I walked. Each step was a small war in itself. Thighs ached, and muscles trembled; it hurt like hell.
And somewhere inside it, buried deep in the bruises and the burn of movement, was that sweet, tangy, regretful feeling.
Not his regret. Mine. For letting it happen. For not stopping it. For some terrible part of me still wanted to be seen by him.
The corridor was long, too quiet as I made my way down the stairs.
I walked into the dining room. And he was there.
Standing with his back to me, shoulders broad and still, staring out the window at the ocean like he hadn’t swallowed me whole the night before.
Grey suit, matching slacks. Clean, composed, and unmoved. As if he hadn’t bled me last night. As if he hadn’t shattered something sacred and stitched it up.
He looked like power. And I hated him for it.
I decided to make my presence known. Though my body shivered at the sight of him. I ignored the rings and let my heels click against the marble. Because I wanted him to see me. I needed him to. So he could hurt me again.
Because hate had become my drug. Hating him. Hating myself more.
But then I stopped when I noticed another presence.
The same man who brought the marriage agreement on the first day. The day Zagreus kidnapped me.
He stood smaller beside Zagreus, shorter and leaner, more human in the presence of a monster. Still in his pressed suit, glasses perched on the bridge of his nose.
The lawyer cleared his throat, adjusting his glasses. “… request your presence, sir.” he said stiffly. “Any more delay and the board will proceed without you.”
Zagreus didn’t move. Didn’t even look at him. Just kept staring at the ocean.
It made the room colder than the sea wind ever could.
I stood there, far enough he wouldn’t notice yet close enough I could hear them clearly.
Zagreus finally spoke. “I don’t care, Jeremy. Let them.”
The lawyer stiffened, and so did I.
‘I… sir, with respect,” he adjusted his glasses again, a nervous flick he couldn’t hide, “the Syndicate needs your presence. It’s been six months since your last appearance. Questions are being asked and allegiances are fraying.”
Zagreus finally turned from the window. And now he was facing the lawyer. “I built the table they sit at,” he murmured. “They forget that too often.”
He took a slow step toward the lawyer, and the poor man shuddered. “If they need reminding...” A faint, cruel glint tugged at his lips. “Tell Romanovski I’m coming to his party.”
The lawyer nodded too quickly, stepping back. Retreated with haste until I heard the door clicking shut behind him.
Zagreus still hadn’t turned to me. But something told me he knew I was here. He knew from the moment I woke up.
“You’re not going to look at me?” I hated how soft my voice came out.
Still, nothing.
Only the crash of waves behind the glass. Only the way his shoulders lifted once.
“I looked at you last night,” he said quietly. “So closely, I could’ve painted your soul from memory.”
I flinched because I remembered. And because some small, broken part of me wanted him to look at the destruction he’d made.
He turned slowly. And when his eyes met mine, it was like the universe exploded. Hunger. Pride. Possession. All of it coiled behind those stormy-grey eyes.
His eyes were so dark I forgot what the world looked like in the light.
As if he could undo me. Like he was moments away from ripping this dress off of me.
Because his gaze stripped me away anyway. Layer by layer. Until I wasn’t the woman, just a toy he could use whenever he wanted.
And somehow… my thighs pressed together.
I hated that too.
His head tilted slightly. “You really like playing the part of my wife, don’t you? You like playing with fire.”
“You made me that way,” I whispered back. “And now you want to be surprised when I burn?”
His lips curled. Not quite a smile. Something deeper and darker. Like pride or even amusement. Maybe he liked it, red on me.
“You only burn when I let you.” He turned to the dining table. “As much as I like to entertain you, I don’t want you to faint. Come, let’s eat.”